The Supreme Court on Wednesday declared Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme as 'Constitutionally valid', stating it has become a very important matter of identity of every individual in the country and urged the government to "introduce strong data protection law as soon as possible". The verdict came following a batch of 31 petitions, including one by former High Court judge K S Puttaswamy challenging the constitutional validity of Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme and enabling 2016 law.

The Court also stated that one should be ‘better than the best’, and by being unique one becomes the ‘only one’.

The court further stated that minimal demographic and biometric data of citizens are collected by the UIDAI for Aadhaar enrolment. Aadhaar number given to a person is unique and can't go to any other person.

There is a fundamental difference between Aadhaar card and identity. Once the bio-metric information is stored, it remains in the system.

Empowering the validity of Aadhaar, court stated that “Aadhaar empowers the marginalised section of the society and gives them an identity; Aadhaar is also different from other ID proofs as it can't be duplicated".

A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra had on May 10 reserved the verdict on the matter after a marathon hearing that went on for 38 days, spanning four-and-half months.